Many a denier of the paranormal has changed his or her mind when confronted, finally, with a paranormal manifestation.
No believer changes mind confronted by this, that, or another debunking.
This is because a skeptic must disprove every anomaly, whereas a believer has to demonstrate an anomaly only once, to change opinions.
All it takes is for the hammer to fall upward, once, to call into question all theories of how gravity works, and of its universality.
Of course, deniers and negaters refuse to accept anomalies, claiming it’s merely a matter of having too little evidence to disprove the anomalous nature of the event. This piteous cry that, sooner or later, enough information will be gathered to allow literally everything to be explained by reductionist materialism is an example of blind faith.
Deniers are closed-minded, insisting certain things simply can never be.
In this way, they negate their own stance. Can’t prove a negative, yet they cling to that notion. Demonstrate my pooka isn’t there. None can. Yet the negaters insist there cannot be a pooka because they somehow mystically know for a certainty pooka don’t exist.
The Pooka of my acquaintance laugh at such sophism.
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Neil deGrass Tyson, emphasis on ass, is a smug, fatuous know-it-all whose mind remains sneeringly closed on all matters paranormal. Relying on “I just know”, he insists on being certain nothing can violate his vaunted physics, despite physics itself offering many examples of violations, anomalies, and outright contradictions.
He’s the perfect Carl Sagan Jr., who shared this arrogance but who smoked more weed, arguably many times more.
Chapter Seven of Demon-Haunted World, Sagan’s final book, attempts to warn CSICOP/Skeptical Inquirer devotees that evidence must be considered scientifically and must not be misrepresented or lied about in order to bring home the “correct” conclusions, that the world is a reductionist materialist Communist paradise, which was CSICOP founder Paul Kurtz’s core belief.
The instant he was safely dead, CSICOP sainted Sagan, ignored Sagan’s lucid warnings, and used him to browbeat all claimants to the paranormal as if he were the end-all and be-all of TRUTH. What bogus spew it was.
CSICOP/Skeptical Inquirer went on rapidly to disgust and destroy any vague aura of rational sane scientific detachment it ever claimed speciously to have. People saw through the ignoring of evidence, the brushing away of genuine witnesses, and the arch patronizing and condescending CSICOP displayed toward anything anomalous. CSICOP lied in desperate, shallow attempts to brush aside any view they disliked.
They made “swamp gas” look good, so pathetic were their strident Phil Klass crazy train denials.
Why so threatened?
Their world view relied on them being right, even if wrong. They were comprised of Right Men, malignant narcissists, and psychopathic bullies determined to force everyone to their narrow, squinty, twitchy view of a constricted sub-reality.
One sees this as clear evidence of cultism. Yes, CSICOP was a cult not standing FOR anything, but only standing AGAINST anything glorious leader Kurtz, with Kurtz’s Krazy Krusaders aligned behind him, disliked.
Since he’s croak-tatered, Joe Nickell has taken the reigns, keeping the sad amateur publication Skeptical Inquirer lispingly alive. He’s worse than Kurtz, being uneducated and lacking any doctrinaire dedication to a dupe’s chosen dogma. He is self-impressed, tiny-minded, and a bully, as are all of them. Phillip J. Klass, a literal lunatic, is his inspiration.
So it continues, with Michael Shermer desperate to become the next Kurtz, although lacking, again, in the academic prowess in degrees focused on Communism. Shermer is a snot, a snit, and a shit. He lies, cheats, and promotes his sub-literate “books” solely for attention. “Look at ME, Mommy, I know it ALL.”
What’s galling is how many in science and public life have fallen under these idiots’ mumbled spells. People buy into fatuous nonsense such as, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.” Not only does this modify a superlative, proof being itself and not part of some sliding scale, but it begs the question, “Who decides when to slap the label ‘extraordinary’ on things?” They are solipsistically seizing the right to decide what is “normal” and what is “extraordinary”, then they’re dismissing “mere proof” and demanding “extraordinary proof”, all while offering no definitions of their terms.
Voltaire would blast this idiocy to smithereens without trying. Modern science and public life embraces it and sinks further into barbarism.
Just a few words on why it’s an idio-crazy.
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You may need to know: CSICOP was the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Veddy Red Communist, note.
Paul Kurtz was professor of Communist Studies, you see, and fell for the dialectic, obviously.
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